Oh My Irma

“This did not go how I planned it,” confesses the speaker of Hayley McGee’s monologue, standing before us in taped together glasses and blood spattered clothes. This strange and dark little comedy offers a succession of things not going to plan, framed as an awkward, squirming defence. McGee’s freakish heroine might be guilty, but she’s not to blame.

Written and performed by McGee, the play follows its protagonist’s search for the truth behind the gruesome suicide of the eponymous, enigmatic Irma, a woman whose blood yearns to break through her skin. It’s a quest that takes her through lots of dirty laundry—in every sense—and ends up in the apartment of a man who might just have the answers, but certainly isn’t about to share them.

McGee’s damaged yet captivating narrator flips mood at the lightest switch, darting between nervous squeaks and withering looks as she attempts to make her explanations. There’s often a childlike “and then” quality to the galloping narrative – a breathless reported stream of “I was like” and “he was like”. In lesser hands this could become an irritating verbal tic, but McGee offers the repetition an almost poetic quality. Poetic too is McGee’s language, which can wrap up beauty and horror in a single phrase.

Quirky and engaging as it may be, McGee’s monologue can also feel as slight as its bruised speaker, working less as a play than as a vehicle for McGee’s gorgeous language and charismatic performance. On those terms, however, it undoubtedly succeeds.